The crew scientist Fuchs finds a shredded up jacket outside with the name Macready on it while holding a flare/torch. Scene cuts to Macready asking the rest of the crew where he is. He orders a search team, while the captain, Clark and Doc are tied to chairs. He orders the men to "watch whoever you're with. Watch close." Outside, Macready checks with Blair to ask if he's seen Fuchs.
Don't think Blair's doing too well... He says "It ain't Fuchs." He wants to come back inside, but Macready refuses. Macready and his search team then find the charred corpse of Fuchs, burned up Fire Ritual fashion. "Maybe he burned himself before it could get to him" says Mac.
Mac then says he's going up to his shack, saying "When I left yesterday the lights were turned off". The scene cuts to his shack and the lights are on. Cue the spooky music. Back in the station, the rest of the crew begin boarding up the doors because Mac and his search team have been gone for 45 mintues. One of the men looks out the window, sees something and then calls the others over. He then grimaces slightly, and seems a little aroused or something. I wonder what happened...
One of the men from the search team comes through the door, bearing Macready's torn up jacket, having abandoned Mac. Mac then breaks through a window from the outside into a room which he has the key to, and Childs begins breaking down the door with an axe, Jack Torrance style.
Mac is found holding a flare and a bundle of dynamite. Notice the 3M (now more like W3) and the arrow pointing at Mac.
The man who showed signs of "infestation" earlier stops breathing and he is carried into another room while Mac warms up and threatens the team with immolation. He says that someone could have taken his jacket and cut it up. Doc is attempting to revive the non-breathing guy (death-rebirth) and we get this lovely scene (not for the squeamish):
Mac proposes a new test to see who's human and who's not. Everyone besides him has to be tied up, of course. In the process, Clark nearly stabs Mac before getting shot in the face, giving him a third eye. I guess I'm some sort of sadist for getting a kick out of these scenes...
Mac's blood test involves taking a blood sample from each crew member and burning it with a hot needle, which causes alien cells to react adversely. Speaking of sadism/masochism, Mac forces each member to give blood by making Windows cut their thumb open with a scalpel. Windows then cuts his own thumb open for his sample. Ouch. These are real men I guess. Mac puts a hot wire to Windows' sample, causing nothing. "I guess you're okay" says Mac. He then tests his own sample, again causing only smoke. To see if his test actually workks, he tries Doc's sample. Nothing. Same for Clark. Childs points out "That makes you a murderer". Time for Palmer's sample - and it's positive. This of course sets Palmer off, going full-alien and breaking free of his bounds. He graphically kills Windows and is then burned by Macready, finally busting out the door and falling flat on his face in the snow. Macready finishes him off with dynamite. He goes back inside and burns up Windows. Everyone else tests negative. Mac then decides to go test Blair.
The outdoor night scenes are replete with Red and Blue, colors of the Right Brain. This whole movie seems to be an insanely well-thought out and conceived parable against right brain thinking and Alien Consciousness. Note: I would never imply that people born in Air and Earth signs are robotically left brain types, and that Fire and Water signs are Right brain types. We are all "center" and have the ability to branch into either of the four sectors (red: right brain dominance, blue: right brain submission, green: left brain dominance, yellow: left brain submission) at any given time, depending on the situation. I, for one, can mostly relate to the Yellow (submissive left brain) mindset, but find the most peace of mind in the Red and Blue sectors.
Reaching Blair's shack, they discover that the door is open and Blair is gone. There are loose floorboards in the shack, and underneath they find a tunnel. Inside the cave there is a UFO, built by Blair out of helicopter parts. He is still nowhere to be found.
From the shack, one crew member sees a figure exiting the illuminated archway seen in part 1. Soon afterwards, all the lights in the station go out, and the backup lights (which are blue) come on. Mac thinks the alien is trying to freeze itself until a rescue team shows up, they will all have frozen to death by then. Mac says "We're not getting out of here alive... But neither is that thing." He blows up the UFO with dynamite, and proceeds to clear each room in the station with fire.
Down in the generator room, which is the only place the lights could have been turned off from, there is no generator to be found. Mac decides to decimate the entire station. While the captain is placing explosives, Blair appears behind him and nonchalantly digs his fingers into the captain's face. The alien, now in giant subterranean worm form, attacks Mac and devours the detonator. Mac still has a stick of dynamite, which he tosses into the giant alien part-human-part-dog-part-worm's mouth, which kills it. Finally. This explosion sets off all the other explosives but Mac survives, as well as Childs. White and black pillars in human form.
That's the end of the movie. It's implied that they both die but not before a TenderManlyMoment (TM) between the two amongst the flames.
I forgot Wilford Brimley played Blair. Apologies for the typos in this post, I haven't slept all night and my mind is going. I took my dog outside this morning and enjoyed the crisp cool air floating with frost particles while avoiding piles of deer poop which litter my backyard like landmines. Thoughts which crossed my mind were: "animals are more at home in nature than human beings ever were" "Trees rock" and "I hope my dog isn't really a malevolent shapeshifting alien"
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